Edward B. Driscoll, Jr.

Edward's Articles

Happy Birthday Internet!March 2003
Switching to the TCP/IP networking standard radically transformed the internet into the sprawling "information superhighway" that has radically transformed the lives of its users.

The TRS-80 Model 1Column:
Micro MemoriesMay 2002
Despite the previous success of the Altair, despite the high-tech buzz that Star Wars was generating at the box office that summer, the press response — as usual when presented with something revolutionary — was a collective yawn.

YouToo Can YouTube And Star In Your Very Own Tech ShowSeptember 2008
Ever completed a killer electronics project and wanted to share your results with the world? We discussed text-oriented blogging in the August ‘05 issue of Nuts & Volts, and audio podcasting in the March ‘07 issue, but why not add movingpictures into the mix, and launch your own video blog?

The Altair 8800Column:
Micro MemoriesJanuary 2003
The Altair — as it was initially sold — was little more than an incredibly difficult to assemble computer kit — basically a computer case with some circuit boards and a processor. It also initially had next to nothing in the way of peripherals.

MICRO MEMORIESColumn:
Micro MemoriesMarch 2004
In 1978, the Internet existed, but it was still largely restricted to universities and the military (and still called Arpanet.) It was only a year before that Hayes had released the first modem for PCs. While CompuServe (see the October 2003 “Micro Memories”) and the Source were positioning themselves as national online services, Ward Christianson and Randy Suess of Chicago had another idea for connecting groups of users to computers: the bulletin board systems or BBS.

MICRO MEMORIESColumn:
Micro MemoriesMay 2004
Using the telephone is such a hassle these days; women have to make sure their makeup and hair is just so and all but the most Cro-Magnon of men want to appear clean-shaven and well-groomed when calling their wives or parents.

MICRO MEMORIESColumn:
Micro MemoriesJuly 2004
Every industry has its own trade show. For consumer electronics, it’s CES in Las Vegas, NV, for computers, it’s Comdex, and for the music instrument industry, it’s NAMM — short for North American Music Merchants.

ROY NORMAN: FROM THE A-BOMB TO THE ENTERPRISEJuly 2004
It served him well with the US Navy; by 1948, he had already served for seven years. He was stationed in Guam, working his way up to the rank of petty officer first class, “getting rid of electronics equipment by throwing it over a cliff,” when he got his orders to report to Sandia Base in Albuquerque, NM.

BOOK REVIEW: THE DIGITAL CONSUMERS TECHNOLOGY HANDBOOKSeptember 2004
On April 3, 2000, when President Clinton’s Justice Department issued its ruling that Microsoft had violated US antitrust laws and the NASDAQ plummeted 349 points (or 7.64%) — its worst single-day performance ever — it signaled the end of the Internet bubble. The next year, the horrific terrorist attacks on the US occurred on September 11th. As a result, we’ve seen much less of what Tom Wolfe once dubbed the “digibabble and fairy dust” that ruled the 1990s...

25 Years Into the Future — 1980s The Third WaveColumn:
Micro MemoriesNovember 2004
Many science and science fiction writers have written books that predict the future. By the 1970s, a term was coined for these sorts of authors: futurists. Few books, however, got the future — the future that we’re living in right now — as right as Alvin Toffler’s The Third Wave, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2005.

The IBM PC and Its Continuing RepercussionsColumn:
Micro MemoriesMay 2005
In the 1999 made-for-cable movie, “Pirates of Silicon Valley,” the filmmakers chose to illustrate how significant a 1980 meeting between Bill Gates and IBM was by having John Di Maggio, the actor playing Steve Ballmer (Gates’ longtime lieutenant), walk out of the scene, up to the camera, and tell the viewers that this — this! — was the most important moment in computer history.

The Atari 2600Column:
Micro MemoriesNovember 2005
Remember the 1970s? Vietnam, Watergate, stagflation, polyester, bellbottoms, John Denver, gas rationing, Saturday Night Fever, and other events that made that decade, at least in retrospect, seem like 10 disheartening, frustrating years. But a few lasting bright spots emerged, as well. The personal computer was one of them.

Spacecraft Films Reopens The New FrontierJune 2006
In early 2006, Spacecraft Films released a six DVD set titled Project Mercury: A New Frontier, containing 24 hours of footage from America’s pioneer space efforts. Coming at the height of the Cold War, this was America’s first attempt to put a man into space — culminating, of course, in President Kennedy’s famous challenge to land a man on the Moon within the same decade...

David Sarnoff And The Birth Of The AM RadioNovember 2006
Sarnoff would take radio out of the exclusive province of the transportation industry and embryonic ham radio hobbyists, and put it into every American home. His stubborn pursuit of technology turned his employer, Radio Corp. of America, into a powerhouse in less than a decade.

The Nuts & Volts of PodcastingMarch 2007
Over the past couple of years, podcasting has emerged as one of the great new buzzwords of the Internet, bringing the same freedom to create personal audio and video productions as Weblogs did for text at the start of the decade...